Forty Nine

                                 Forty Nine

                                 By Bob White

I never would have guessed that forty nine years ago driving away from this quaint town in an old Ford station wagon, with a four finger bag of seedy ass Mexican, about two hundred dollars cash and oh, cannot forget my four hundred eight tracks. Little did I know that I would not return for fifty years or so, and that my return would be in an electrically powered car?

My birthplace, my little league park, my first skateboard park, my first heavy petting memory, my public education, so many things that helped it be the village that raised this child. Heck, it’s where I learned to cuss.

Well I guess my parents moving abroad, and not many friends that meant much more than the amazing kerbobbled cluster of instant friends I have met being on the road, kind of up and down and back and forth all over the country, in the cities, at the parks, but my favorite was the folks working graveyard in a Waffle House on a slow night, if three or four in the morning is nighttime. Now there is always a gunny sack full of stories and usually one or three people that were slightly one or two tokes over the line and drunk enough to get a fire going with that alcohol bloated breath.

Not judging mind you because I’ve had to have had angelic copilots on way too many of my own escapades, but young folks do young stuff, and young stupid folks do young stupid stuff. But if you’re blessed like myself age works on the stupid, but not even a close second to how stealth fully it steals the youth.

Holy mackerel dude, how old do freaking crepe myrtles get, Wow, old Puffy the town cop used to amass speeding tickets, right there, was a laundromat, looks vacant. That beautiful, red, flowering bush, I mean I was a teenage boy with ninety nine thousand hormones running around in each in each pocket and even I, Eddy Frampton, resident of the village, aah, well town maybe, of good old Forty Nine, Delaware, U.S.A. mind you even I recognized that revenue generating big, beautiful bush. Granny told me it was a crepe myrtle, but now it’s older than granny and I always just thought it was a big old bush but Granny could name anything that grew out of the ground. Granny was smart.

Huh! Only two things in the town that were any prettier than that bush, and I’m telling you that was my Mama and a little girl that moved away around middle school, the day I got my braces. Kathran Ashley. She always was jabbering about why her name was spelled funny. I told her you can’t spell a name funny because it’s a name. She would laugh.

 I wanted to kiss her. She told me as soon as you get your braces on like mine are. She got kind of sad I think, but pinky swore that the very same day I got my braces on she would kiss me. She had braces and didn’t want to kiss me if I didn’t have braces. She hated her braces I remember, but I Dee Double Dog promised her that they just made her beauty shine. I loved her.

But, all of a sudden the moving trucks showed up at her house, every dag gone neighbor and neighbor’s neighbors and they all were crying and hugging and chattering and doing everything they could to keep Kat away from me on that horrible day. But she moved away never to be heard from again, and my whole time left in Forty Nine I dated a bunch of girls, but never had another girl friend.

But old Puffy, now there was the perfect town cop. Mostly kind of like a combination of Barney Fife and Joe Friday. He was tickled to death to write several of what the townsfolk all called Bush Tickets for the speeders driving past that bush, but if there was a disturbance he usually stayed away until stuff quieted down. Not sure if there had been crime like in these turbulent times Puffy would have been a police officer.

But one of the great mysteries of Forty Nine was where in the world Puffy got his nickname. I know three different versions myself of how Officer Baron Dallas Boston became Puffy the town cop.

The first story, and the one I always believed, was that everyone always knew him as Puffy because he was always puffing on a Lucky Strike. I mean, if the man was awake, the man was smoking a Lucky. He used his tiny cigarette burning butts to light his next cigarette. He could blow through several cartons of Lucky Strike in a week and only use seven matches. His little parking oasis, using the bush, that hid the sign, that paid his check, always had a pile of Lucky butts in that one spot in the laundromat parking lot. The rest of the property was immaculate. I think the cleanup guy knew Puffy and liked seeing the Lucky butt pile grow.

Another real silly story, the one my dad told me went back to the song “Puff the Magic Dragon” and was all about a self- confessed fear of dragons in his youth. Maybe he smoked all of them Lucky Strikes to keep the dragons away.

But the most popular one was that he and some of the boys were fishing off the dock on Portly Creek, and catching blow toads is what I always called em, but some folks called them puffer toads. Well any how Puffy hadn’t lived here very long and had never fished before his family moved here after WWII. Well the boys said when he saw that fish seemingly turn into a basketball with gills that could swim, he got so scared he jumped right off the dock.

              Boy a small town cop sure don’t get much respect, at least not in Forty Nine, Delaware circa      1970. Even after all these years I’d give a seagull’s lunch to know exactly how he got to be Puffy.

              Well its getting late. Looks like a cool town to spend the night, check things out a bit in the morning and probably head somewhere else. But that could change by tomorrow. You know what the Lord says about timing. Too lazy to pitch my tent, plus they are calling for rain later, I need a good night in a real bed, and I see there is a brand new Motel Six a three minute walk to the only local business that seems exactly the same. Well kind of mostly and I never been in there.

               3^rd Base Lounge, Dad always joked it was the last stop before home and most nights for most dads it was true. So I’m going to shoot back to that ALDI I saw, and fill my room with snacks and stuff for later. Then I’m going to walk to third base. Wow, better not say that too loud, those Major League owners will get wind of it and they will change the rule to speed the game up. Morons! I can hear the announcer now  ”and the batter Lopez takes third to open the ninth on a four pitch walk from Smith, ironically a pitcher known for his control.”

              Pulling into this tiny ALDI, great, got my quarter out, great, walking up to get my cart as I am checking out what looks like a gentleman  apologizing to this very attractive lady; he only has one quarter and she has none. He grinned and looked at her and said “Got forty nine cents exactly.” As I thought about my “Always have extra quarters at ALDI rule” just in case someone ever needs one. When I look at her and try to think of something clever to say, our eyes meet, we both got like weird feelings of Déjà vu and I said “Kat” and she smiled with the most beautiful smile and said “Eddy.”

              We didn’t go into ALDI, we went out to dinner, and well today is our four year nine month wedding anniversary. The Lord and his timing.